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It was the third day of the NFL draft in April when Pena and his mother, Susan Cruz, watched from her New York home, waiting for a team - any team - to call his name.

Four years earlier, this was the same house Pena helped keep afloat following his mother's diagnosis of thyroid cancer. In that moment, Pena dropped everything, including going off to college to play football, to provide for a mother who once held three jobs to support him and his two older sisters. ...